


By the End of the Day

by insignificant457



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29095878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insignificant457/pseuds/insignificant457
Summary: Kaz Brekker has spent years building walls between himself and others. He begins to tear them down the same way he does everything else.Brick by brick.
Relationships: Kaz Brekker & Inej Ghafa, Kaz Brekker & Jesper Fahey, Kaz Brekker & Nina Zenik, Kaz Brekker & Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 71
Kudos: 229





	1. Chapter 1

Wylan stands in the fenced in chicken coop of Colm Fahey’s farm, sprinkling chicken feed at his feet while the sun beats down on his neck, threatening to give him a terrible sunburn. It's a far cry here from the gloomy streets of Ketterdam, but the change isn't an unwelcome one. 

Several weeks ago, Jesper had received a letter from his father, inviting him and all of his friends to visit the farm. Wylan suspects that during his brief stint in Ketterdam, Colm had recognized a group of children in desperate need of a parental figure, and that this invitation had been a way of trying to watch out for them. The idea that a father would care so much for not only his own son, but his son’s friends as well is astounding to Wylan, considering he’d spent several weeks trying to keep his own father from killing all of the same people Colm was inviting into his home. Jesper had been skeptical about returning to Novyi Zem, made obvious by the fact that even a year after the Ice Court and the ensuing fight for their lives and their money in Ketterdam, he had yet to return. By inviting not just Jesper, but the others as well, Colm was making it clear that he wasn’t trying to get Jesper to stay, only to visit so they could continue repairing the relationship that had become so strained when Jesper left for Ketterdam. Wylan had agreed to come immediately, not just to support Jesper, but even just to get out of Ketterdam for a while and see the place that had shaped Jesper into who he was when Wylan met him.

The biggest surprise was that Kaz had agreed to come. Of course, he put up a front of annoyed indifference, and then claimed that he was only coming because it was a good opportunity to get insight on the jurda crop so he could make investments and play the market. Wylan suspects the real reason has to do with the fact that Inej had offered to take some time off from hunting slavers in order to take them all aboard the Wraith and visit with Colm. 

Neither Nina nor Kuwei were able to come with, as Kuwei is still hard at work with the Ravkans trying to create an antidote to parem, and no one has been able to get into contact with Nina since she left Ketterdam. Kaz claims with remarkable certainty that she is in Fjerda on a mission for the Ravkan crown. Wylan has no idea how Kaz knows this information, but he claims it comes from a reputable source. 

They arrived in Novyi Zem on the Wraith two days ago and arrived at the Fahey farm yesterday afternoon. Wylan and Inej had offered to help with any chores that needed to be done, and Colm had gratefully accepted their assistance. Since neither had any farm experience, he’d assigned them easy tasks. Inej is lightweight and not afraid of heights, so she’d been sent to get fruit from the higher boughs of the small orchard on their property, while Wylan had been assigned the task of feeding the chickens. 

The chickens are much more aggressive than he would have imagined, and they crowd around his feet, cornering him against the fence. He is pulling out another handful of feed, hoping to sate their appetites before it turns into bloodlust ( _are chickens carnivorous?_ he asks himself, his sheltered city upbringing providing him no answer), when he hears a familiar voice from the other side of the fence say “You’re doing it wrong.” 

Wylan looks up at the voice, taking his eye off the maybe-carnivorous chickens for a moment due to the sheer unexpectedness of that voice. Kaz Brekker looks just as out of place on this farm as Wylan feels. It’s not necessarily in the way he’s dressed, which is more relaxed than Wylan has ever seen him. He has foregone the waistcoat and suit jacket, leaning on the fence in his black trousers and suspenders, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the crow and cup tattoo on his forearm. He’s also without his gloves, although that has become a more common sight recently, at least among the members of the Ice Court crew. It’s the fact that Kaz, who in Wylan’s mind is synonymous with the cobbled streets and crowded canals of the Barrel, is here, surrounded by miles and miles of green pastures and orange jurda blossoms, barely any buildings in sight, and none over two stories. 

“What?” Wylan responds, and then his focus is forcefully drawn back to the horde at his feet when one of the chickens pecks him hard on the ankle. He drops another handful of the feed into the mass, then looks back up to see Kaz climbing over the fence into the enclosure. He uses his cane to steady himself as he does, and Wylan notices that he lands gingerly, taking most of his weight on his good leg. His limp has been worse since the coup that allowed him to take over the Dregs, during which, Inej had informed Wylan, he’d taken a particularly damaging blow to his already bad leg. Wylan knows that Genya Safin could have fixed it. After all, if she could restore Wylan’s features in just a few short hours, she could certainly set a bone right. But Wylan is beginning to understand that Kaz does not see his disability as a hinderance, but as a war wound to be proudly displayed and feared. It’s a mentality he is working on developing for himself. 

“You’re feeding the chickens wrong,” Kaz says, shooing them away with his cane. He grabs a handful of the feed for himself and tosses it out in multiple directions around them, scattering the food in a wide radius, so that the chickens move off of Wylan’s toes and off of each other. “If you just drop it, they’ll all go for the same spot and then the ones on the outside of the pack don’t get any food.”

“Oh,” Wylan says, flushing a little. He really must be incompetent if the Bastard of the Barrel knows how to feed chickens and Wylan doesn’t. He places a hand into the feed bag and imitates the motion Kaz had made, scattering feed and keeping the chickens away from him. 

“There you go. You’re looking less like a damsel in distress by the minute.” 

“My hero,” Wylan says, then peers over at Kaz, wondering, as always, if it will be worth the trouble and scathing remarks to try to unpack the mystery, and deciding that if he can help break into the Ice Court, he can handle anything else Kaz might throw at him. “Where’d you learn to do that in the Barrel? I don’t remember seeing any chickens wandering along either of the Staves.”

Kaz is silent for a moment, as if contemplating whether he wants his retort to be emotionally devastating or simply mildly scathing. To Wylan’s surprise, his response is neither, just confusing. “I didn’t learn it in the Barrel. I learned it at home.”

“Home?” Wylan asks, turning to look at him. “I didn’t know you knew the meaning of that word.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t crawl out of the harbor and into a gambling den. Well, I did, but not until I was nine.” This fact is offered up so nonchalantly that Wylan wonders if he’s missed something. Is this common knowledge and Wylan is just the last to know something yet again? That would certainly be on-brand for him. 

But, no, despite the indifference in his voice, there is a tenseness in the way Kaz is holding himself that has nothing to do with his bad leg. Wylan has spent enough time keeping secrets that he recognizes the posture of someone about to reveal some. If Kaz is really about to offer up information about himself to Wylan, he’ll accept it gladly, but he knows he has to be careful about it. If Kaz thinks Wylan is eager, or if he feels that Wylan is prying, he’ll clam up and threaten to cut out Wylan’s tongue as a precaution, lest it get out that Kaz is made of anything more than shady rumors and nightmares made flesh. Or something like that. 

So Wylan continues to feed the chickens, and takes his cues from Kaz’s tone. He says, in the same nonchalant tone, “So the place you were before the harbor and the gambling dens—it had chickens? Sounds nice.”

Kaz gives a noncommittal grunt, and they fall into silence for several minutes, before he says, “It was my job to feed them.”

Wylan waits a moment, giving him time to elaborate if he so chooses, but that’s not Kaz’s style. “How many were there?”

“Six. I named them all.”

“Yeah? What were their names?”

“I don’t remember.” Another pause. Then, “The little one was Alida.” 

“I thought you didn’t remember.”

“I don’t.” There’s an edge in his voice now, and Wylan backs off. He pauses for a moment before he asks, “Any other animals?”

“A dog.”

“A big one?”

“Yeah. Her name was Jacoba.” There something in his voice that speaks of fondness and something like homesickness. 

“Did you name her?”

“No.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. We had to give her away when we left.”

“We?”

“We,” Kaz says, and there is that steel in his voice again, a warning note that tells Wylan not to ask who else he could be referring to. So he tamps down his curiosity and waits to see if Kaz will continue. The silence is punctuated by the clucking of chickens, and the wind in the trees. And then Kaz says, “There was a cat, too. To catch mice. I named him Pieter. I always thought that was funny, when animals had people names.” The information is coming faster now, as if a floodgate has been opened. “Da said not all the animals needed names, but I insisted, so he let me. I even named the birds that would make nests in the trees outside my window.” He stops then, as if he’s said too much. Truthfully, it’s the most Wylan has ever heard him talk about anything that wasn’t part of a scheme, and all of the little revelations that have come out in the total of forty-five seconds that Kaz has spent actually speaking and not staring intensely at the fencepost opposite them with his hands shoved in his pockets, have Wylan reeling. The only coherent thought he can form is _Kaz thinks it’s funny when animals have people names._ Wylan doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with this information. 

Kaz has firmly shut his mouth, and he doesn’t appear to want to say anything more, but he hasn’t left or threatened to skin Wylan alive yet, so he figures he can at least get one good question in before that happens. Before he can really frame it in his mind, it’s already coming out of his mouth, and it’s not as tactful as he may have liked. “So ‘the Bastard of the Barrel’ is a bit of a misnomer then?”

There is a hint of danger in Kaz’s gravelly voice as he says, “It serves its purpose.”

Wylan waits to see if he’ll say anything else, but this confessional appears to be over as quickly as it began. The chickens seem to have eaten their fill, as they are dispersing to wander around the coop, leaving Wylan the space to kick his foot in the dirt while he tries to think of something—anything—to say. Kaz’s tense silence next to him is not helping his thought process. Eventually he settles on, “Thank you.”

“For what,” Kaz says flatly, with an angry note underneath it. But it’s not the type of anger that would have had Wylan running for cover a year ago. It’s something else, something he can’t name. There’s a tenseness rolling off Kaz, but there’s a hint of expectancy there too. Like he’s waiting for Wylan to read a verdict. Whatever it is Kaz expects Wylan is judging, Wylan has no idea. 

He wants to say _thank you for trusting me_ or _thank you for showing you’ve got a heart somewhere_ or _I’m sorry for whatever happened that took you away from those chickens and the dog and the cat and the boy who named all the animals even the birds outside his window._ But Wylan has known Kaz long enough now to know when to press Kaz and when to let it go. So instead he just says, “Thanks for the help with the chickens.” 

Kaz looks at him, and something shifts, something loosens in his posture. He gives a nod, and Wylan nods back, like they’ve just made some sort of clandestine business deal. 

Then Jesper is hollering something from the house about Inej and apple pie, and Kaz is starting across the chicken coop and hauling himself back over the fence. 

Wylan stands there for a minute, watching him limp across the yard before following. He thinks maybe he knows Kaz Brekker a little bit better now, and also that maybe he never really knew him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Kaz wouldn't know where to start with sharing personal information, so he just infodumps and pretends like this is something everyone already knows. I also feel like, outside of Inej, Kaz would start to open up with Wylan first, if only because Wylan would be the easiest to bully/threaten into silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who read, gave kudos, and commented on the last chapter! Hope you all enjoy this one!

Jesper is wondrously, spectacularly drunk. 

His head feels light, but the room isn’t quite spinning yet. Still, he’s sprawled out on the floor of the Van Eck mansion, his fingers digging into the expensive rug in front of the hearth. He suspects Kaz is also wondrously drunk, given the lightness of the bottle of whiskey he’s just set down next to Jesper’s face. 

Wylan is out of town, having taken his mother out of the city for a bit of fresh air. Marya has been prone to fits of depression since her release from St. Hilde’s eighteen months ago, and Wylan has found that a few weeks spent in the country house, just the two of them, generally does the trick to improve her mood. Jesper stayed behind to keep the Van Eck shipping company affairs in order in Wylan’s absence, and for the most part he’s been fine on his own in the huge house, but tonight he’d been feeling loneliness pulling him toward a gambling den. Instead of giving in, he’d raided Jan Van Eck’s liquor cabinet, and shown up at the Slat with a bottle and a promise to share stock tips if Kaz would come to the mansion and drink the night away with him. 

Kaz flops down on the carpet as well, having finished divesting the couch of its cushions. He props his bad leg up on the pile and throws an arm up over his face. It's maybe the most relaxed Jesper has ever seen him, but he notices that Kaz makes sure to put enough distance between the two of them to satisfy whatever arbitrary personal space requirements he has. 

“I haven’t been this drunk in…” Jesper starts, then trails off, momentarily distracted by the softness of the rug beneath his cheek. Why has he been sitting on the couches and chairs in this room all this time when this rug is so wonderful?

“Days?” Kaz suggests. 

“Months. Maybe years even.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really. Wy’s not a big drinker, and what fun is it being the only drunk person in the room?”

“No fun at all.” Kaz’s hand fumbles for the bottle next to Jesper’s face and brings it to his lips. He’s not wearing his gloves, and something about that makes Jesper ridiculously sentimental. He pushes it down, though, knowing Kaz would never stand for such a thing. 

“I’m going to be so hungover tomorrow,” Jesper says with a laugh. “I’m supposed to meet with Van Aakster about investments or some shit. I’m supposed to be, like, _presentable_.” He waves a hand at in the general direction of his own lanky limbs sprawled here on the floor of the sitting room in a testament to the opposite. 

Kaz gives a snort and says, “When Jordie turned thirteen, he thought he was, like, officially an adult or something. So he raided my father’s liquor cabinet and drank half a bottle of brandy. But he didn’t want Da to know he’d been drinking so the next morning he had to pretend like he wasn’t hungover.” He pauses to take another drink. “Worked pretty well until he puked all over the cow.”

Jesper’s brain goes quiet for a moment. There he is again. Jordie, this mystery figure in Kaz’s past. _Someone I cared about. Someone I didn’t want to lose_. Jesper has heard nothing of him since that incident, and part of him wants to pick apart Kaz’s admission for clues about who this Jordie was, why Kaz had called him by that name so long ago. But his brain feels like it’s sloshing around in all the whiskey he’s had tonight, and he’s just not up to detective work. So he just says, “The cow didn’t deserve that.”

“No,” Kaz says, and the levity with which he’d spoken before is gone. 

Jesper cranes his head to look at him. He’s running is thumb along the lip of the bottle, his eyebrows drawn together. It’s far too serious a look for tonight. “You know,” Jesper says, returning his gaze to the gilded ceiling. “Wylan let slip once something about you growing up on a farm.”

“Little shit should have kept his mouth shut,” Kaz mutters, but there’s no venom in his words. 

“‘Bastard of the Barrel’ my ass. You always acted like I was just some stupid country bumpkin who was so naïve in the ways of Ketterdam, but you’re no better, Farm Boy.”

“Don’t call me that. You’ll ruin my sacred reputation,” Kaz says, then downs the last of the whiskey. They lay there in silence for a while. Jesper’s thoughts have never been great at staying in one place, and they’re even worse when he’s drunk, so his brain has jumped to three or four new topics before Kaz breaks the silence. 

“Jes?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I tell you about Jordie?”

Jesper’s surprise is so immense that it pushes him up onto his elbows so he can get a better look at Kaz. He’s lying stiller than he was before, and there’s a tension in his brow as he stares resolutely up at the ceiling. The empty bottle of whiskey is clasped in both hands over his stomach. “Hell yeah, you can tell me about Jordie,” Jesper says in what he hopes is an encouraging tone. 

Kaz doesn’t look at him, but he says, “He was four years older than me, and he acted like that made him so much more worldly, and wise. He wasn’t, but I believed him anyway. But maybe that’s just how all little brothers feel.”

Brothers. There’s a lump in Jesper’s throat. Ever since their fight in the clock tower at the Geldrenner hotel, when Kaz had slipped and called Jesper by Jordie’s name, he’s wondered. Wondered who this person was who meant so much to Kaz. Wondered why it was Jesper he’d called by that name, not Matthias or Wylan or Kuwei. Brothers. Is that how Kaz sees him? 

“I think…I think if you’d have known him, you’d like him more than you like me.”

“Oh yeah?” Jesper manages to push past the lump. “Why’s that?”

“You’re more alike. He was restless and optimistic and arrogant, too.”

The intended insult doesn't even register. “Like you’re not restless and arrogant.”

Kaz shrugs, the gesture somewhat lost given his prone position. “Once, when I was maybe four, he convinced me that the way to get honey out of a beehive was to throw a rock at it. I got stung eight different times. He laughed while it happened, but later he felt so bad that he cried and told me he’d do my chores for a month.” Kaz’s dark eyes are dry, but there is an unfathomable sadness to them. “He was like that. Never thought things through. Didn’t realize how much he’d hurt people until after they were already hurt. Then felt so bad about hurting them that he barely knew what to do with himself.”

Jesper knows that feeling intimately. He thinks about his father’s face when he’d realized Jesper had thrown away his money and trust. Thinks of Inej, stabbed and bleeding on a table because he ran his mouth to the wrong person. Maybe he and Jordie really would have gotten along. They'd have been kindred souls.

“When we came to Ketterdam, he was so convinced that everything would work out. That we’d be rich in no time. Just a little hard work and we’d be running this town. I think even then I knew that was bullshit.”

“Maybe he knew, too. Maybe he was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Maybe,” Kaz says, and then, after a pause, softer than Jesper’s ever heard him speak before, “I miss the hell out of him.”

“What happened to him?” Jesper asks. Truthfully, he’s not sure he wants to know. It doesn’t take a genius to pick up on the past tense, and basically everything about Kaz screams ‘tragic past,’ but this feels like the natural extent of the conversation, and the alcohol has loosened Jesper's already admittedly loose tongue. 

“He died. The plague.”

This surprises Jesper a bit. It seems impossible that someone related to Kaz could be taken out by anything other than a hail of gunfire or an assassination. “The Lady Queen’s Plague?”

“Queen’s Lady Plague,” Kaz corrects. “Yeah.”

Jesper was not in Ketterdam at the time the last real plague swept through the city, but even he’s heard stories. Wylan had mentioned it once, that his father and mother had made him stay cooped up in the house until it was all over. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal, hearing it from Wylan, but he supposes these things are different when you experience them on the other side of the poverty line. 

He remembers Kaz’s grand plan, the fake plague that had helped bring Van Eck and Rollins low. It’s admirable, Jesper thinks, to take something that had been the cause of so much pain, and use it for your own good. 

“Did you get sick?” he asks, genuinely curious. He’s never seen Kaz look even the slightest bit ill in all the time he’s known him. He’d always figured his immune system operated the same way the rest of him did—out of pure spite. 

A hardness forms in Kaz’s eyes at Jesper’s question. He raises the bottle to his lips, then seems to remember it’s empty. He puts it down next to him and says with a cold finality, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jesper often pushes things too far, but he likes to think he’s learning when to quit while he’s ahead. So instead, he hauls himself up from the floor, waits a moment to fully get his balance, and makes his way to the liquor cabinet. He returns with two glasses and a new bottle of whiskey. He pours a generous amount into each, then hands one to Kaz, who sits up to accept it. Jesper holds up his own glass in toast. “To Jordie,” he says solemnly.

“To Jordie,” Kaz says quietly.

They drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesper/Jordie parallels make me want to scream into the night, so from the beginning of plotting this story I knew I wanted Jesper's chapter to be about Jordie. For those keeping track at home, this takes place about six months after the last chapter. The passage of time and the alcohol are probably behind Kaz's ability to be slightly more open, even though this is a more painful subject.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Nina time! This chapter's a little different than the previous ones, more Nina-centric, but I think this one might be my favorite so far. There are a couple oblique King of Scars references, but if you haven't read it, you'll have no problem understanding. 
> 
> Thanks so much for all the positive feedback so far! It's really fueled my writing. I hope to be able to finish this in a week or so, but I've still got a lot to do for the last chapter. Hope you all enjoy this one!

Nina has no idea what possesses her to do it. But she’s been trying not to give too much thought to anything recently, so when she sits down at her desk to write the letter, it starts like this:

_Dear Kaz,_

_I don’t know why I’m writing this to you either, so don’t ask._

_Maybe it’s because Inej doesn’t have a permanent address anymore, so I can’t send it to her. To be completely honest, though, I’m not sure I’d send it to her anyway. I’m not sure I could stomach well-meaning Suli wisdom right now. And Jesper would try to lighten the mood, turn it into a joke, and it’s not. And I can’t send a letter to Wylan, for obvious reasons. I can’t tell Adrik or Leoni, the Grisha I’m with, either, because I’m pretty sure they both think I’m a huge bitch. Maybe because I’ve been acting like a huge bitch._

_Also, let’s be honest, you couldn’t care less about me, so it’s not like you’ll try to make me feel better or anything._

And then she goes on to write six pages of complaints about Fjerda, and its terrible weather, and its terrible food, and especially its terrible people, and everything that’s wrong with the world, which is really quite a lot.  
She signs it off with:

_I think I might actually mail this. I think that would be cathartic. What do I have to worry about, you won’t respond._

_Yours in hell,_

_Nina_

She posts the letter from Mila Jandersdaat, because the postman had looked at her strangely when she tried to mail a letter with no return address. 

Then she throws herself into her work, and into trying not to think about Matthias, and forgets all about the letter. Until one day, Leoni hands her an envelope sealed with black wax. When she opens it, all it says is:

_Zenik—_

_They sound like assholes._

_—KB_

She remembers, then, what she had said at the end of her manifesto, about him not responding. He did it just to be contrary, she’s sure. Why else would he pay postage for a single sentence? It makes her smile, just a little. The action feels almost foreign. 

He hadn’t invited a response, and she’s sure he isn’t expecting one, but she’s contrary, too. So she picks up a pen.

_Brekker—_

_Complete assholes. Every one of them. I think it’s the weather that does it. Here’s an update._

She fills the letter with more menial complaints. It feels good to complain, to be angry at something concrete. If she thinks too much about what she’s really angry about, she’s afraid she’ll explode, or maybe unravel into nothingness. She ends the letter with:

_You know, maybe I’m the one who’s become an asshole._

_Hellishly,_

_Nina_

She posts it. Thinks maybe she might get a response. She does. 

_Zenik—_

_Of course you have. Grief turns everyone into assholes. Look what it did to me._

_—KB_

It’s not what she expected. There’s an admission there, even though the letter is only three sentences long. She thought you had to love someone to grieve them, but she’s never known Kaz to love anyone. Maybe Inej, but she’s still alive and well. She wants to ask, wants to press him for answers. Who is he grieving? How does he keep going when grief makes it feel like the world is pressing in on all sides? How long will this go on? Not forever, she hopes. She doesn’t think she can do this very much longer, let alone forever. 

But no matter how many letters she starts and crumples up, she can’t find the words to ask. So in the end, all she says is:

_Brekker—_

_Is that what made you decide to get that awful haircut? I don’t think I’m ready to sink so low._

_Love,_

_Nina_

It feels strange to send him her love, but that’s what they do when they’re being cheeky with each other. And this letter is cheeky. It’s not out of place. 

His response is equally cheeky.

_Zenik—_

_No, Nina, dear, I do that for the sole purpose of annoying the hell out of you. Glad it’s working._

_—KB_

It makes her grin, and for a moment, it’s like the world isn’t supremely awful. It feels like old times, and she finds her hand drifting to her forearm, where the Dregs tattoo has been Tailored away. She’s supposed to be getting information out of the locals, but she decides that can wait. She grabs a pen and some paper. 

_Brekker—_

_Oh, good, I was worried you actually liked it that way. There’s this woman here who’s hair looks like an actual birds nest, but from the way she talks about it, you’d think it was the latest fashion in Os Alta…_

And so go their communications. Nina sends pages of complaints about the mundanity of her life, and Kaz responds with a sentence or two. They never discuss the big things, the heavy things. It’s just triviality and sarcasm, and it continues for months before Nina realizes that this ongoing bitchfest she’s been having with Kaz is the easiest and most enjoyable thing in her life right now. She finds herself looking forward to his letters, even though they never say much. She never would have guessed talking to Kaz of all people would make her feel better, given that most of their in-person conversations left her with a headache and a desire to put her fist through a wall, but somehow it does. It’s nice, to have a conversation with no expectations, no sympathetic words or pitying looks. She never talks about the ball of grief she’s been carrying around, never says anything about his admission in that early letter.

Until that day. The terrible day. When she sends only a single sentence, and the page is stained with tears, and she doesn’t even bother to sign it, but she knows he’ll know who it’s from all the same. 

_I buried him today._

Even before they became unlikely penpals, she and Kaz had always had an unspoken agreement never to discuss anything too serious. Don’t ask, don’t tell. I don’t care, and neither do you. But she can’t bear the weight of this, the finality of it. She needs to tell someone, someone who’d known him alive, and probably Kaz doesn’t even miss him, but he knew him, and that’s enough. 

She had not signed her latest letter, but he does, and she’s glad of it, because she wouldn’t have believed it otherwise. 

_I’m sorry._

_—KB_

She stares at this latest note in shocked silence for a long time. There is a humanity in that sentiment that she didn’t know Kaz possessed. Part of her is touched. The rest of her wants to be angry at the triviality of it. _I’m sorry?_ Sorry doesn’t mean shit, not when Matthias is dead, buried in the cold Fjerdan ground. Sorry won’t bring him back, won’t bring justice, won’t tell her who murdered him or why they did it. She wants revenge, but she doesn’t even know who to take it on. 

And that’s the worst part of it. The hopelessness of the mystery. 

Kaz knows about revenge, she realizes suddenly. If anyone could do it, could find out who murdered him, and why, and where they are now, and then tear their life apart, it’s him. 

So she fills her next note with pleas, demands for information. For a plan. She needs a plan because she has spent months and months wandering in search of something, anything that will make this horrible pit in her stomach go away, that will take the weight off her shoulders. And what good is a mind like Kaz’s, devious and vile and brilliant, if not for this? If not for weeding out those who have wronged them and making them pay?

His answer is less than ideal. 

_Zenik—_

_It won’t bring him back._

_—KB_

She’s so angry she can’t think straight. Mr. _Brick by Brick_ is going to take the high road now? Kaz Brekker, who somehow brought Jan Van Eck and Pekka Rollins and the entirety of Ketterdam to its knees over what he was owed is going to dish out meaningless platitudes? What about what Nina is owed? Isn’t she owed some sort of justice? If justice can’t be found, vengeance would be enough, and she thought that if anyone would agree, it would be him. 

She doesn’t bother to respond to his letter. If he’s going to be like this, like all the rest of them, she wants nothing to do with him.

She doesn’t respond, but eventually she gets another letter from him. 

_Zenik—_

_I’ll see what I can do._

_—KB_

The letter is a surprise. In all the time they’ve been writing, he’s never shown much interest in their communications. His letters, if one can even call them that, given their brevity, never encourage the continuation of the conversation. She knows he must enjoy their letters on some level. Kaz is by no stretch of the imagination polite enough to keep writing if he didn’t. But still, when she’d cut off communication, she’d expected that to be the end of it. She never would have expected him to reach out to her. 

He’s changed. She’s sure of that, even if she hasn’t seen him since the day she left Ketterdam. The Kaz she knew would have been glad to be rid of her letters full of trivial nonsense. He never would have actively sought out communication, and he certainly wouldn’t have offered his services in finding information without attaching enough strings to stage a puppet show. 

So she writes again. No trivial nonsense this time. She tells him everything she remembers about the night of Matthias’ death. Gives him every detail she can, hoping he can do what he does best and connect the dots no one else even knows are there and provide a culprit. Once they have that, a name, a face to attach to the crime, they can begin to plot revenge. 

After she posts this letter, months go by with no word from Kaz. She has to send him an updated address when she goes deeper undercover, but still she hears nothing back. She begins to lose hope. And then, as the harsh Fjerdan winter finally begins to turn to spring, a letter arrives for her, written in a now familiar spidery hand. There’s a heft to the letter that there has never been before. 

She has to wait until later that night to read it, knowing there may be sensitive information. Finally, alone in her room, she holds the letter to the light of a candle and begins to read. 

_Dearest Nina,_

_I know you want information, but first, you must indulge me. Allow me to tell you a story._

_Many years ago, two boys came to Ketterdam from the south of Kerch. There they believed they would find success and fortune, but instead they found their ruin. They were swindled out of every penny they owned, and ended up on the streets. Only one survived._

_This boy spent years plotting revenge against the swindlers, and exacted it bit by bit as each person involved was brought to justice. Not in a court of law, but in a more personal manner. Eventually the boy had brought the man who’d devised the plan, who’d executed it and in doing so executed the boy’s brother, to his knees. It was all he’d ever wanted. It was splendid._

_And then the sun set on that fateful day, and it rose again, and the boy had no more vengeance to take. It was an empty feeling._

_I’ve never been anyone’s idea of a role model, but I’ve been told I make a wonderful bad example. I spent eight years plotting revenge, Nina, dear, and I’ve finally had it. Don’t get me wrong, it felt great, and I wouldn’t want to deny you the chance to experience that feeling for yourself. But I’ve also realized that it didn’t fix everything. My brother is still dead. I still have to spend the rest of my life without him. Maybe Inej has been a bad influence, but I’ve been thinking more about that part—the rest._

_I will not deny you your revenge, Nina. You and I both know you deserve it. But you know the rules—never something for nothing. Revenge is something, and I’ll help you get it. But if you’re not careful, you’ll be left with nothing else._

Nina pauses for a moment to let it all sink in. The story he tells is not an overly tragic one. In fact, it is one Nina had encountered many a time in Ketterdam. It is a sobering thought, to think something so commonplace could have been the catalyst that began the creation of Kaz Brekker. 

She turns the page, wondering what else he has to say, but Kaz is done preaching for today. What follows is a list of names—suspects. Kaz has included the whereabouts of six different people on the night Matthias was murdered. He’s also helpfully included their possible motives, and how likely he believes it that these people were the culprit. 

She pores over the evidence in her hands, eager to finally have something to hold on to, a hope of justice to be served. 

In her head she can hear a familiar rasp. _Never something for nothing, Zenik._

He is right. This is something, but, she thinks she will heed his warning. She will not be left with nothing. She’ll make sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In King of Scars, Kaz is mentioned in Nina's POV chapters more than any of the other SOC characters, and I think they have an incredibly fascinating relationship, but when I started this series I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to take Nina's chapter. I'd already dealt with Kaz's secret farm boy past and Jordie, and I knew I wanted to save the Reaper's Barge for Inej, so I wasn't sure what secrets Kaz had to reveal to Nina. Then I thought of the line "grief turns everyone into assholes, look what it did to me," and the rest really just flowed from there. 
> 
> Nina here is very angry, and looking for vengeance against the faceless killer of someone she loved, which Kaz has intimate experience with, even though Nina doesn't know that. She turns to him because she knows he can give her the vengeance she craves, but in a shocking turn of events, Kaz turns out to be the more emotionally mature one here. This story is about Kaz opening up to his friends, and part of being open and caring for your friends is ensuring that they don't go down the same paths you did. In the end, I'm sure they'll find that druskelle twerp and make him pay, but the need for revenge won't consume Nina the way it did Kaz, since he's there to warn her about it's dangers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter, here we are! Kaz and Inej's relationship makes me insane I could scream about it for hours, and it took a while to (hopefully) do them justice.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone for reading, leaving kudos, commenting, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Inej is sitting on the familiar roof of the Slat, feeding the crows as she always does when she returns to Ketterdam, when the window opens behind her. She knows he’s there, and she knows he knows she knows he’s there, but she doesn’t turn around. It’s not that she’s angry with him. She’s not, not at all. But she doesn’t really want to face him after the embarrassment of last night. 

Because last night the two of them had finally, after two years of whatever it was that they had, finally worked up the nerve to kiss, and it had not gone well by any stretch of the imagination. 

They’d been sitting next to each other on the window sill, talking amiably about something she can’t remember anymore, when Kaz had leaned in. He’d stopped with his face a few inches from hers, and she’d nodded, giving him permission. She’d been thrilled by the initial press of Kaz’s lips to hers, so she’s not entirely sure how it ended up where it did. 

Which was, of course, with Kaz retching into the flowerpot she’d given him after her first voyage, and with Inej herself escaping out the window, hoping fresh air would quell the panic rising swiftly in her along with the memories of other men’s lips. 

She had not returned to the Slat that night, instead spending hours making her way across the roofs of the University District, hoping the less familiar terrain would draw her memories away from horrible nights of violation. She already had a hard enough time keeping those particular demons away, the last thing she wanted was to allow Kaz’s face to replace those in her nightmares. She’d ended up at the Van Eck mansion in the early hours of the morning, and spent the rest of the night tossing fitfully in an overly plush bed.

All day, she’s been making up excuses to avoid going back to the Slat, but her traitorous feet had brought her across Ketterdam’s rooftops to the one she knew the best. She’s been sitting here for an hour or so, but she has yet to alert Kaz to her presence. Or so she thought. She should have known better, though; he always knows when she’s there. 

He hauls himself onto the windowsill rather less gracefully than Inej would, and she watches him climb out to her out of the corner of her eye. He settles himself against one of the Slat’s chimneys, and stretches out his bad leg. There’s a distance between them that feels nearly unbridgeable. In the past, she may have kept the distance, deeming it safer, but they’ve both agreed to try to remove their armor as best they can, so she scoots closer, leaning against the side of the chimney perpendicular to him. That way they don’t have to look at each other. 

As she settles in, she notices his hands. Gloved. There is a pang in her heart at this sign of backsliding. He hasn’t worn the gloves when it’s just the two of them in over a year. She isn’t disappointed in him; all she can think is that the kiss last night was not worth this. It’s one step forward, three steps back. 

As if reading her mind, he says, “Sorry about the gloves. It’s not about you, I just…I need them for this.”

“For what?”

He takes a deep breath, and it shudders at the end. It’s an entirely unfamiliar sound, and it sends a chill down Inej’s spine despite the warmth of the summer evening. “To tell you why I…need them.” She sees his fingers flex. She knows him well enough by now to know that gesture. He’s nervous, and grounding himself. 

She places her hand gently on top of his, and he flinches badly. She removes her hand quickly and uses it to wave off his mumbled apology. “You don’t have to do this, Kaz. Last night, it…it wasn’t your fault. I had trouble with it, too. Maybe we’re just not ready for that, and that’s okay with me. I’m not upset with you.”

“No, it’s—it’s not about last night. Well, not entirely. I—it’s—you deserve to know.”

She has wondered. She tries not to—Kaz is her friend, more than her friend, and she refuses to speculate on his life and his demons. She knows all the rumors, of course, and knows that they are all false. But if he is willing to talk, she’s willing to listen. 

So she settles her hands in her lap, and says the words she’d said so long ago in the bathroom of the Ketterdam Suite at the Geldrenner Hotel. “Go on.”

He takes a deep breath. Then another. One that stutters a little in the middle. Until finally he says, “I’m not sure where to start.”

“The beginning is as fine a place as any.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him nod. “Jordie and I—Jordie’s my brother, I think you know that”—she does—“we came to Ketterdam when I was nine. Our father had just died, and we were too young to run the farm ourselves.” He pauses again. Inej has found, over the years, that Kaz is absolutely terrible at talking about himself. He’ll offer up one piece of information, and then clam up and get defensive, as if he’s worried that it can be used against him. She knows the power information holds in Ketterdam, knows that Kaz has been conditioned to think it a weakness to allow someone to know him in any way. But the Suli believe in sharing. Sharing everything—homes, families, happiness, heartache. So she has tried, as gently has she can, to get Kaz to understand that pain shared is more far more manageable than pain held closely to ones chest. She thinks he may be starting to believe it himself. Still, getting information out of Kaz is like picking a lock. Luckily for Inej, she learned from the best. 

“What about your mother?” she asks gently, as if the question is of no consequence, even though she has wondered for some time. 

She hears the rustle of his clothes as he shrugs. “Complications in childbirth. I never knew her, Jordie didn’t remember much, and Da didn’t like to talk about it.”

“Mmm,” she says, quietly sending a prayer to her Saints for the soul of Kaz’s mother. She wants to lament the fact that Kaz’s life has been steeped in such tragedy from the very beginning, but she can already hear him saying _I don’t want your pity, Wraith_ , so she keeps it to herself and waits patiently for him to continue. 

“When we got here, we didn’t know anything about the city, or it’s ways. That’s how Rollins got us.” This part of the story she is familiar with. She had been there when he had confronted Rollins about his brother, had been able to piece together what happened. They’d been taken in, treated well, and then swindled with a heartlessness that is unfortunately not uncommon in the Barrel. But still, the thought of a grown man conning two recently orphaned children out of every penny they had sets Inej’s blood boiling. “Once Jordie signed over the money, and Rollins had fucked off with it to who knows where, we got evicted. We didn’t have anywhere to go, and no way to earn money, so…”

“You ended up on the streets,” Inej supplies. This part of the story makes sense to her. It’s not new. The details of Kaz’s past are murky at best, but her time as a spy had trained her to make connections between the smallest bits and pieces of information. She knows Kaz and his brother were swindled, and knows that it was Rollins who did it. She knows they ended up on the streets, and that Jordie had died there, and that that is why Kaz blames Rollins for his brother’s death. But none of this explains Kaz’s complete inability to endure skin to skin contact. She’d briefly wondered if he’d fallen in with the pleasure houses. Saints knew Inej had had a difficult time being touched by anyone after her time in the Menagerie, but Kaz had never given any indication that her experience was one he shared. If it wasn’t that, what kind of trauma could cause such an extreme reaction? Part of her is morbidly curious, and the other is more than happy to remain ignorant.

“Yes,” Kaz says. His breathing is becoming more erratic, and she knows that the difficult part is coming. She wants more than anything to lay a comforting hand on his arm, to squeeze his hand, to hold him to her chest the way her own mother had done for her when she’d recounted her time at the Menagerie. But she knows it would do him no good. It is so difficult, sometimes, to have to love him from a distance.

“Kaz,” she says gently, turning to look at him. He is pale, and sweating, and his gloved hands are clenched into fists. “I know this isn’t easy. But, whatever it is that happened next, it’s over. The past can only hold as much power over us as we allow it.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Maybe not,” she admits. After all, she had decided long ago not to let Tante Heleen and the horrors she had forced upon Inej dictate her life, but that doesn’t stop her waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares. That didn’t stop her from feeling like she needed to crawl out of her skin when Kaz kissed her yesterday. “But how much more are you going to allow it to take from you?” He takes a deep breath and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “You’ve come this far. And I’m here to take the next step with you. I’m not going to go anywhere, Kaz. You should know that by now.”

He nods, just a little, but doesn’t lower his hands. “It was right around the same time the Queen’s Lady Plague began. People in the Barrel live on top of each other, there was no avoiding it. People were dropping like flies, and a couple of street rats didn’t stand a chance. Jordie got sick first, then me. I—I don’t remember much about being sick. The fever was so intense, I think I was delirious. I…I don’t remember when he died. I just woke up one morning, and…”

Inej bites her lip and stares out at the horizon as she blinks away tears. When she had returned to Ravka with her parents, she had discovered that one of her uncles had died in the years she was in Ketterdam. She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye, couldn’t remember the last thing she’d said to him. And Kaz had been so small, and Jordie the only family he had left. The tightness in his voice speaks of deep heartache, a wound that can never fully heal. 

“The plague hit the Barrel the hardest. Bodies were piling up in the streets, and the bodymen weren’t checking for a pulse, and I was still so feverish….” Kaz’s voice is so tight that she almost wonders how he’s even forcing the words out. Then, all of a sudden he takes a sharp breath, and the words come out it a harsh staccato. “They thought I was dead. They put me in the boat with the others and they hauled me out to the Reaper’s Barge and they left me there.” The silence in the wake of that statement is deafening. The words seem to ricochet around Inej’s brain for a few moments before the weight of them truly sinks in. There is a horror behind those words, and that matter of fact tone. Inej raises a hand to her mouth, and when she turns to look at Kaz, he is looking back at her. His eyes are searching her face, but she doesn’t know what he is looking for. 

Inej can’t help but picture it, a small boy, tangled in among the corpses, all alone. And for a moment, she thinks that she finally understands. This, then, is the demon that hounds Kaz’s every step. This is the one enemy he cannot think and scheme and beat into submission. The monster that rears its ugly head with each press of someone else’s skin to his own. 

But Kaz is not done. 

He looks away from her face, and the deadness in his voice as he speaks again will haunt her forever. “My fever broke, and when I came to, I was alone out there in the shallows. Corpses everywhere. Jordie was—” he shudders, then quickly abandons the end of his sentence, “I thought the bodymen would be back, that they’d see they made a mistake, but…they didn’t.” Inej cannot tear her eyes away from his face. She wants him to stop, wants to go back to her ignorance, wants to run, anything to keep away the horrible knot forming in her stomach. And yet she knows she must see this through, because Kaz needs her to hear this. It is a confession of sorts, although not one of his sins. An exorcism, then, of his own personal demons. 

“I knew I had to swim for it, but it’s a long way to the harbor, and I was weak from the fever.” She watches his lips open and close, watches him try and fail to form the words. 

“How?” she whispers, dreading the answer.

“Bodies float. So I—Jordie,” is all he manages to force out. He’s pulled his knees to his chest, and his fingers are gripping his trouser leg so tightly that she can hear the leather of his glove creaking. His eyes are far away, and the darkness in them has nothing to do with their color. 

They sit there in silence for a long time. The only sound is the wind winding it’s way through the roofs and gables of the buildings surrounding them and Kaz’s harsh breathing. 

She had wondered, from those first days after the Menagerie, what had made Kaz Brekker into the boy he was. What it was that could have taken the soul of a child and twisted it so out of shape. Evidently, her imagination had not stretched to the realm of reality. 

Kaz has not shed a tear. He has lived with this horror for ten years now; she is not sure he has any left to shed. But she does.

She buries her face in her hands and cries. Cries for Jordie, and cries for the boy Kaz was before. _Two boys,_ she thinks, _that I will never meet_. For the boy Kaz was before the plague, before the Reaper’s Barge, before that terrible night in the harbor, is gone. How could any part of him survive such an ordeal? He must be ashes on the Reaper’s Barge.

But, no, she thinks that may not be entirely true. Because in the last two years, she has seen glimpses of that boy on rare occasions. She thinks maybe she saw him last night when he leaned toward her and pressed his lips to hers, hesitant and inexperienced, but hopeful all the same. 

She feels him now, as a gloved hand wraps itself carefully around her wrist. 

When she pulls her face out of her hands, she sees him looking at her. His eyes are more present than they were a moment ago, but she sees the shadows behind them all the time. 

She musters up a watery smile, aiming for reassuring but most likely failing miserably. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I’m not trying to make excuses—”

“Kaz,” she interrupts him, admonishment clear in her voice. “Shut up.”

He smiles then, just a little, just a lift of one corner of his mouth. It feels like a victory.

He raises his hand to her face and uses his gloved thumb to wipe away a tear. She reaches up and carefully folds his hand into her own, maneuvering herself so she can sit next to him. She watches his face for a minute, then carefully leans her head against his shoulder, half expecting to be pushed away. She wouldn’t blame him for it. He stiffens, but doesn’t move to shake her off. They sit there in silence, watching the sun sink further and further beneath the horizon. 

Despite the things he has told her today, the horrors she knows now, she is hopeful. Because, in the silence, as Kaz leans his cheek against her hair and squeezes her hand, she can swear she hears the last piece of his armor clatter to the stones below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, they make me so emo.
> 
> Note: I think that Kaz and Inej still have a very long way to go and a lot of work to put into their relationship. Admitting the specifics of your demons is not the same as defeating them, so even though this is a huge step for Kaz, they've still got a lot of baggage to work through. But understanding where that baggage comes from is a huge step in the right direction, and I think that's really what Inej has been looking for from him since the famous "I will have you without armor" line.


End file.
